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Well I waisted 90 mins of my day today on an issue with the S2 App.  The problem is that my paired Play 3’s in my Study appear in my S2 App on my phone, but whenever I leave the app (with the music playing), and go back into the App, the App shows no music and I cannot therefore control the music volume etc.  Useless when I need to pause the music immediately.  Eventually it reappears after 45-60 seconds, but repeats each time I leave the S2 app to do something else on my phone.  

So after speaking to the Sonos Support helpline on the phone, they decided that it was because my Play3’s are too old and the processor cannot cope anymore!  It was suggested I upgrade (save 15% on the upgrade programme).  I won’t be doing this.

I’m posting this because this is the biggest load of rubbish I’ve experienced in 15 years of using Sonos and spending thousands of £ on equipment.  I have a cinema set up, portable, one in my bedroom and another pair in my kitchen.

The reason this is rubbish is because when I play music directly through the Spotify App via my phone and then divert to my Sonos Play3 Speakers, I do not get the same issue.  I do get a two second delay in controlling the music via the Spotify App and hearing the instruction I have made, but otherwise a much better experience.  So it would appear there is nothing wrong with my Play3 speakers that need to be upgraded!  I can also control my Sonos Play3’s via my PC using the Spotify App!

I was going to buy some Sonos headphones, but that isn’t happening and I’m seriously considering ditching my equipment after all of these years.  I just want to me able to go to my Sonos App and be able to play my music without any drama, workaround or other issues.  Is this too much to ask after spending £’000’s on this equipment?

Is it just me, or are there others still with fundamental issues with the S2 App?

If Sonos want to gift me a pair of alternative speakers to test out for them, I’ll give it a go, but I won’t be buying anything else!

Odd suggestion, I use PLAY:3s daily with S2 running in them, and have no challenges at all. Any idea to whom you spoke at Sonos Support ? It seems like they need some additional training. 

What it seems like to me is some sort of difficulty in your S2 controller reaching your PLAY:3 s on a consistent basis. It’s not clear to me whether this is due to common wifi interference , or possibly a duplicate IP address issue. I’d certainly have thought a system diagnostic would have exposed that, but then I don’t really know what is in one. 


My Sonos app is frozen, won’t open, should I reinstall? 


It can’t hurt, certainly. I’d also try a power cycle of the speakers, and the router, since the app is merely looking for the speakers to show you what is happening there. I suspect if it is failing to reach the speakers, it might (although there really should be a fail state) not be reaching them. But nothing to be lost, just make sure when you reinstall that you ‘connect to existing system’ when presented the option. 


A few times recently I found rebooting the Controller device to be a help.


It’s not just you …. I have a surround theater studio setup (playbar, sub, 2 x Play:1), living room speaker pair (2 x Play:3)  and a Play:1 in my office, plus a NAS drive with a large music library and lots of playlists. But since the S2 upgrade it’s been a shambles.

Right after the ‘S2 upgrade’ I lost the music library - could not access it from any controller (I have them on  iPhones and a couple of Mac desktops).  Could not even add the music library - could type in the path but the system could not connect to it. 

About 2 months ago I could finally access the NAS music library via the Mac Sonos app , but with dysfunctions. For example,  ‘compilation’ albums are listed but the album viewer  can’t display the songs on that album (simply says “no selections are available”). But if I add the ‘album’ to the queue then the songs show up and play .... Idiotic.

Meanwhile, to this day none of this works on the iphone (or ipad) app  - still can’t  get the devices to ‘add’ the music library…..

I have had a couple of help desk calls to try and deal with this but neither of them them have been helpful .. indeed I get the impression I’m the only one to have this problem. Which can’t be true….

Oh, and sometimes I will go down to the  basement theater area to watch a film and and when I head upstairs I find that, somehow, starting the film in the theatre room has caused the living room zone to start playing a radio station I’d played there 2 days previously…..

I mean really, WTF?  These are basic features that are missing or broken. 


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